“Did you remarry?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “After my...after...well, did you remarry?”

  She blinked and reached for her napkin. “I did not.”

  “Well, then. Why do I have to find a suitor? It seems like you can do all this yourself. You are, as you say of me, available.”

  My mother pressed her lips together. She did not appear amused. “My situation is different. It’s a complex and delicate matter. You are young and unencumbered by too much history. You have a fresh, untethered heart.”

  I thought abruptly of Nol, and a flash of pain shot through me.

  “But I don’t understand why—”

  “Enough.”

  More arguments danced on my tongue, but my mother gave me no time to speak them. She pushed back her chair and stood. My sister followed suit.

  “You will host gatherings and attend balls to meet a suitable companion for your station. You will learn your place in this family and in this household. I will have your new tutor for you to meet tomorrow. Goodnight, Aemiana.”

  With that, she and my sister left the room.

  ~ ~ ~

  That night, I stared at the shadows on my wall until sleep made my eyes too heavy to stay open. I felt myself falling into dreams, and then I was on Nautilus’s ship, a prisoner again, with other prisoners all around me. I turned my head and there was Nol, sleeping beside me. I reached out and touched his hand with mine, and he stirred but did not wake. A pang shot through me at the sight of him. I was angry, and sad, and mixed up.

  I no longer trusted him.

  I looked to the other side of the room, and there was Kit, his back to the wall, watching me. I struggled to my feet and realized with a fizzle of shock that I was unchained. I stepped over the sleeping bodies until I reached his side.

  “Kit,” I whispered. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. How did you get here? I didn’t know they took you captive with the rest of us.” Tears filled my eyes and clogged my throat. I was happy, inexplicably.

  He didn’t seem to hear me.

  “Kit.” I grabbed his shoulders. “Kit?”

  An alarm began to sound. Red lights flashed, and the door opened. The other prisoners staggered up, disoriented and confused. Behind me, I heard Nol call out my name. I ignored him.

  “Kit!”

  Still, he didn’t see me.

  “The ship is sinking. We have to get out of here.” Nol was at my side. He grabbed my elbow, and I tried to shake him off, but he wouldn’t let go.

  “Kit, please,” I whispered. “Come with us. I need you. I miss you.”

  Nol tugged at my arm, and I let Kit go and followed him. When we rounded the corner of the corridor, the Dron were waiting with Commander Valli at the front of their company. Her eyes flashed with triumph as she congratulated Nol on his successful work. I couldn’t move as they grabbed me and dragged me away.

  I woke in a cold sweat, the words I’d begged still on my lips and tears in my eyes, and lay still for a long time.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “THIS MIGHT BE just what you want,” Tallyn said, panting as he easily dodged an ill-aimed strike from me the next morning while we practiced self-defense. “A gathering, a ball. All those people in one place, and you have to make small talk. Perhaps you can discover information—about your father, about Azure, about any number of things.”

  “What happened to ‘avoid politics and not discussing the past?’” I demanded, amused. I swung again, and this time my tiny hand connected squarely with his chest. He didn’t even grunt. “What happened to dressing up pretty and making small talk?”

  We practiced self-defense and hand-to-hand combat in the basement level of the estate, the great stone-walled chamber where the rail carriages were kept. Merelus and Tob watched from places against the wall, the former still at the estate because I had hired him as an additional tutor that very morning, the latter because he was on “inspiration holiday” and needed to be out of the kitchen, his words.

  The dim lighting from the lanterns at the stairs and the lights above the parked carriages on their rails threw shadows over Tallyn’s eyes, making him look fierce as he faced me.

  “Those admonishments were from a simpler time, when I was pretending to be an etiquette teacher and your life was yet unthreatened and far less complicated,” Tallyn said. “Besides, you will be dressing up pretty and making small talk. Pointed, directed small talk about important matters, but still small talk.”

  “I don’t think digging for information about my dead, traitorous father could ever be construed as small talk.”

  “Imagination, my girl. You have to use it in these matters.” He lunged at me, reaching for my throat with both hands. I twisted and crouched down as I’d been taught, allowing his momentum to carry him over me.

  “Good,” Tallyn said when he picked himself up again, smiling. “You’re making progress.”

  I straightened slowly. His smile hadn’t reassured me. “What if there’s another attempt on my life, Tallyn?”

  “That’s why we’re having these lessons,” he said. “In case that happens.”

  “These lessons will prepare me for a physical assailant, but what if it’s another bomb?”

  “You have a bodyguard,” he reminded me with a ghost of a smile.

  I didn’t return it. “You aren’t infallible. And what of the things Annah said, or at least implied?”

  “Your mother and grandmother have a long-standing grudge. You cannot consider the warnings Annah gave you without taking her possible prejudice against your mother into account first.”

  “So you think there’s nothing to what she said?”

  “No, I won’t say that, but don’t decide your mother is behind your father’s death just yet.”

  I sighed. “She’s forcing me to take a new tutor.”

  “I’m still in your grandmother’s hire as your bodyguard,” he reminded me. “And you plan to retain my services here as well, as you have with Merelus.”

  “She’s trying to change everything.”

  “Patience,” Tallyn said. “This is undoubtedly uncomfortable for her too. Up until a few months ago, she thought you were dead.”

  “I almost feel that she still wishes I were,” I said.

  “The Graywaters are not known for their warmth. Of course she is glad you are alive. Patience, Aemiana.”

  I did not feel particularly patient. “In the meantime, I will still try to find my friends. She cannot take that from me.” My throat closed, and I swallowed.

  He studied my face as I readied myself for another attack. “Are you all right?”

  “I miss them. Kit, Mella, even Nealla. Now that I have an estate, a title, how can I sit here and attend balls and parties while they could be suffering on a desert island somewhere? Or worse, what if they are prisoners in Nautilus’s clutches?”

  There was another alternative, an even less happy one than that, but I wouldn’t entertain it until I’d exhausted the rest of my options.

  I wouldn’t let myself say that they might be dead.

  “Shall we rest for a bit?” Tallyn suggested, nodding toward the others.

  Merelus sat against the stone wall, his legs folded, teaching Tob to play Hooks. Tob crouched atop a barrel with his chin in his hands, and his face scrunched up in frustration. Merelus wore an air of modest triumph like an invisible mantle about his shoulders.

  “The scholar plays Hooks like a madman,” Tob grumbled as we reached them. “Every time I think I’ve got it, he’s only lulled me into believing I have the upper hand. It’s those blasted tides. They get me every time.”

  “Do you play, Aemi?” Merelus asked.

  “I do not,” I said, leaning against the wall and observing the game. “I have enough frustration in my life as it is without losing to you in Hooks.”

  “Perhaps we should make it a part of your education.” He was smiling.

  “You just want another person for you to beat at your game,” I said. “I’m not sure I want to offer myself up for the slaughter.”

  “Who’s being slaughtered?” Lyssia, Merelus’s dark-haired, big-eyed daughter, appeared in the doorway of the circular stairs that led to the upper rooms of the estate.

  “Tob,” I said.

  Tob rubbed his face with his hand. “I’m a cook, not a warrior. Give me a bucket of sea snakes, and I’ll make you the most delicious dish you’ve ever tasted. The scholar here would probably get himself bitten and die of paralysis before the water had boiled.”

  “Most likely,” Merelus agreed, keeping his face carefully somber as he captured another of Tob’s pieces.

  Tob growled under his breath. “And Hooks does not feed people. It’s just a game. So who’s the real master, hmm?”

  Merelus captured another piece, then leaned back with a sigh as Tob threw up his hands with a yowl.

  Lyssia skipped to her father’s side and leaned over his shoulder. “You beat Tob,” she observed. “Does it feel nice?” To the rest of us, she said, “He never beats me.”

  “Ah, so he has some compassion. He lets his daughter win,” Tob muttered.

  “Lets me win? You retract that slanderous claim immediately. I beat him from my own talent!”

  Tob appeared skeptical.

  But they didn’t have time to argue it out, for Hexor descended the stairs and spotted us. He bowed and addressed me.

  “My lady,” he said. “The new tutor has arrived. And you...” He paused and scanned me, taking in my disheveled hair and sweat-soaked clothing. “You are not fit to be seen by your mother.”

  “What does my mother have to do with it?”

  “She wants to introduce you to the tutor.”

  I sighed.

  “Also, I received another missive from those inquires you sent,” he said, reaching into his pocket.

  My heart drummed fast. The missives were in search of information about Kit, about Mella, about anyone from the Village of the Rocks.

  “And?”

  He extended the paper, and I snatched it from his hand and unfurled the slip. I was taut with hope, strung up in fear and breathless expectation.

  I scanned the words and was silent. My shoulders slipped.

  “No news yet?” Merelus asked gently.

  I lowered the paper and then tucked it into my pocket. “No news.”

  “It will come,” he promised.

  I wasn’t sure. I set that disappointment aside for now. I had other matters to face.

  “To the gallows, then,” I said.

  “Gallows?” Tob asked quietly behind me.

  “A surfacer method of execution,” Merelus whispered.

  I ignored their muttering. Straightening my shoulders, I followed Hexor for the upper part of the house.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  MY NEW TUTOR was slender and bronzed, with coppery brown skin, reddish hair pulled tight away from her face in a bun at the base of her neck, and narrow eyes a luminous shade of brown-gold. She was small and slender, almost delicate, but the way she drew herself up as I entered the room made me suspect that no one would ever get close enough to make such a move. She moved with a grace that made me think of a shark, lithe and alert and ever-watchful. When she lifted her arms, the muscles in them rippled, and I reconsidered my assessment of her fragility. She wore a long green dress with a slit up one leg that revealed a shimmering gray bodysuit beneath. Her eyes were old. Her expression was one of infinite weariness. These attributes made her seem ageless, but she couldn’t have been more than a few years older than me.

  “You’re filthy,” my mother said when she saw me. “Covered in sweat. What is the meaning of this? Explain your appearance.”

  “I was taking lessons,” I said, directing my stare at the new tutor. “From my other tutor.”

  “Lessons?”

  “Lessons in self-defense.”

  My mother pressed her lips together. She gestured at the woman beside her. “This is Coral. She will be your new and official tutor in the manners and matters befitting a Graywater. You are to listen to her and do as she says.”

  I said nothing.

  My mother swept from the room, leaving me alone with my new tutor.

  Coral fixed her golden eyes on me. She neither smiled nor frowned. Her expression was perfectly neutral, and it made me uneasy. “I’ve heard much about you, Aemiana.”

  “Well, the rumors are true,” I said. “I have wrestled sharks and sea monsters with my bare hands. You should probably be afraid.”

  Her mouth flexed in the shortest of smiles. “I did hear that you could be snappish.”

  “I already have enough tutors, and I’m not inclined to waste time with another.”

  “Then we shall not waste time.” She pointed at a chair. “Sit down. I will assess you to determine your aptitude in the things we will be learning.”

  “What if I paid you to not teach me?”

  She smiled again, and it didn’t reach her eyes. Her voice hardened. “Sit down, Aemiana.”

  “Aemi.”

  “Aemiana,” she repeated.

  So that was how it was going to be. I sat, mostly because I was too frustrated to think of anything else to say.

  “Now,” Coral began, her expression turning winsome as if I’d complied with obvious delight instead of annoyance, “what do you know about the history of the Primusean nobility?”

  ~ ~ ~

  “I loathe her,” I said to Tob as we sat in the kitchen. “She makes me feel like I’m back in my surface village. She makes me feel like a thrall again.”

  Tob pushed hair out of his eyes. He sat on a stool beside the gleaming countertop, writing down a menu for the evening. I saw words like “tubeworms” and “intestines” on the list before he pulled it away from my eyes.

  “Don’t look,” he said. “It will ruin your appetite. And you aren’t a thrall. You’re a lady. Don’t let her make you feel otherwise.”

  “She looks at me as though I’m sludge on the ocean floor.”

  “You’ve been treated worse, haven’t you?”

  I had. Much worse. Had I grown so soft in the months as a lady? Heat rushed to my cheeks, and I chewed my lip in consternation. “You’re right. What is wrong with me?”

  “She won’t be the only one to address you with condescension here,” he advised. “So use it. Figure out a way to make her respect you. You certainly managed to do so with all of us in Celestrus, and you were a servant.”

  We were silent a moment. Mentioning Celestrus threw a pall over the room. Tob put his pen down and shifted on the stool. He blinked a few times. His throat bobbed as he swallowed.

  “I miss her,” Tob said, speaking of Mella, our friend who had perished in the attack on Celestrus by Governor Nautilus. “She always knew what to say. She was always bossing me around, telling me when I was being too forward. I feel like a ship without an anchor.”

  “You’ve gotten better about it,” I said. The words were a thin comfort, like a pat on the arm after news of a lost leg.

  “Nol survived,” Tob said, his tone turning fierce. “Couldn’t Mella have survived too? She was smart. Resourceful. She would have known what to do.”

  “It’s possible.” But I didn’t believe myself even as I spoke the words, and I hated myself for it. One friend managing to survive the attack was already miraculous. Two seemed unbelievable. Besides, Nol and I had been at the highest point in the city, almost to the surface. The chance of someone else swimming from the depths...

  Impossible.

  And yet we hoped for it.

  He dropped his head and sighed.

  “I’ve hired someone to look for them,” I whispered. “Mella, Kit...everyone I’ve lost. Something might turn up.”

  Tob looked hopeful, but then he drooped. “What if she was rescued by the Dron just like Nol?”

  He spoke the last words quietly, under his breath, because our knowledge of the Dron and our capture and subsequent escape from them were still a secret. We had not yet decided—Merelus, Tallyn, and I—if speaking about the event would cause us to be arrested as traitors, or laughed at as liars.

  The door to the kitchen opened, and we both fell silent.

  My sister stepped inside.

  “Hello,” she said, halting in the doorway. “I thought... I thought no one was here.”

  “Can I help you with something?” Tob hopped off his stool and swept a hand in the direction of the counters. “I’m just planning the menu for dinner.”

  “I was just hungry and thought I’d look for a bite to eat,” she said.

  She carefully avoided looking at me, and the back of my neck burned. I felt the sting of her rejection keenly, and I hated that I was powerless against the pain of it. Why did I care what these people thought of me? They were family, but not family that I had chosen or even grown up knowing. Why did it matter so much what they thought?

  But it did. Their distain burned me. Their disinterest gutted me.

  “I have some nice pickled starfish,” Tob suggested to my sister. “Or roasted clams.”

  “What about something sweet?” she asked.

  “I...” He paused. “I do have some pastries that might be to your liking. They’re cooling in the ice box. Would you care to see them?”

  She straightened and pressed her lips together, casting a glance my direction before reining in any eagerness she might have otherwise shown. “I would, yes.”

  My stomach felt like a stone.

  “I should go. I need to speak with Tallyn.” I slipped from the room without another word, leaving Tob prattling cheerfully about pastries. I heard him say, “You are very pretty,” before the door closed, and I rolled my eyes.

  Maybe he did need Mella’s reminders still about speaking so frankly.

  I went to my room and paced before the wall of glass that showed the sea beyond. Bluish light bathed me in cool shadows. I dragged in a few calming breaths and went to the bed, intending to flop onto the soft coverlet and scream into a pillow.

 

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